I have to wait another two to three weeks to take the photograph I want of an old school and church. I saw the photograph in my mind a few months ago. I need the sun to set to the north of the east/west axis to make the photo. I just checked it again yeasterday afternoon and saw that the sun is getting close to the right position.

I do most of my photography in the county where I live. This is a great advantage because I can wait for the right light. I keep a small note pad in my car so I can jot down ideas and recall them later.

I don't keep detailed notes, however. I used to, but it bacame too cumbersome to keep up. I don't really care what exposure I made X photograph with two years ago.

Appreciate the reply's everyone...Like Matt, I probably spend too much time thinking about this sort of thing but find myself very aware of light (especially the early morning and late evening - golden hour light). It's kind of like the light in fog, some of the coolest works I have seen were made either with natural or artifical light with fog.

Plus have started to notice many buildings really look their best just as the outside lights come on, and the last bit of daylight still lingers...you get the idea.

I don't keep detailed notes, however. I used to, but it bacame too cumbersome to keep up. I don't really care what exposure I made X photograph with two years ago.

It generally doesn't matter to me either (except when the picture doesn't come out right), but I'm surprised with the number of questions on various forums I've answered regarding exposure of one IR film or another because I had written down the information when I took the shot with whatever film.

The U.S. Navy lists tables for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset( is that a word?), for altitude and azimuth. This is pretty handy if you have a compass and do a bit of thinking. It will give you the information you need just by entering your location. tim

The U.S. Navy lists tables for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset( is that a word?), for altitude and azimuth. This is pretty handy if you have a compass and do a bit of thinking. It will give you the information you need just by entering your location. tim

I have a free Ephemeris program for my Pocket PC that does the same and more. I got it here: http://home.comcast.net/~jonsachs/
There are also some other photography related programs there, all free.

Bruce

That's Jonathan Sachs, who coded Lotus 1-2-3 and produces Picture Window, a great d*g*t*l image package which "thinks" like a photographer rather than a graphic artist.

There is also a great free program from the US Naval Observatory called ICE, for Interactive Computerized Ephemeris. It runs under MS-DOS or in a DOS window and can produce tables at the intervals you specify from the latitude and longitude you specify for a great number of celestial objects, including the sun and moon. You can do such things as an hourly chart of the sun for a certain day and location, giving altitude and azimuth (compass bearing). Here's one place to get it: http://stjarnhimlen.se/ice/ice.zip

There are also a number of free astronomy programs (often called planetarium programs) that you could use for finding the best time and date for photographing a given subject, or where the sun and moon will be in the sky. Here's one starting point for a number of platforms: http://www.oberlin.edu/observatory/i...warelinks.html

Lee

Last edited by Lee L; 04-05-2006 at 12:48 PM. Click to view previous post history.

I don't take notes, but rather pay attention and try to remember when. Doesn't always work, but sometimes it does. Maybe I should take notes!

Funny anecdote about waiting for the light. A friend and I were out in the mountains, and we each had a different shot framed up. The light wasn't there yet, and the clouds were moving pretty slowly, so we had to wait. We had been waiting for about 10 minutes when a car pulled up, and a few people got out and wandered over to us. After spending a bit of time looking around and watching us watching the mountains, they asked us what we were waiting for: I turned and said without any hesitation,